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Trademark law at its heart is intended to protect consumers from confusion -- for example by preventing Pepsi from passing off its cola as Coca-Cola. Increasingly however trademark owners are trying to use their trademarks in ways that actually harm consumers by restricting their access to information from and about...

In 2003 EFF applied for four exemptions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) asking the Copyright Office to allow consumers to:Play copy-protected audio CDs that malfunction to prevent playbackView foreign region-coded DVD movies on U.S. playersFast-forward through unskippable commercials prior to movies on DVDsPlay and make full use of...

In the 2009 rulemaking EFF won three critical exemptions protecting the important work of video remix artists iPhone owners and cell phone recyclers from legal threats. The first proposal was aimed at protecting the video remix culture currently thriving on Internet sites like YouTube. The filing asked for a...

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act prohibits "circumventing" digital rights management (DRM) and other "technological measures" used to protect copyrighted works. While this ban was meant to deter copyright infringement, many have misused the law to chill competition free speech and fair use. Every three years the U.S. Copyright Office...

In this case, the Internet Archive pushed back against a formerly secret national security letter (NSL). Represented by EFF, the Archive informed the FBI that it did not have the information the agency was seeking and pointed out that NSL included misinformation about how to contest the accompanying gag order...

Most people assume that consumers have a fair use right to time shift television to watch at a later time. As a result lots of companies now sell digital video recorders (DVRs) that enable you to do this including TiVo and it's generally accepted that selling DVRs is perfectly legal...